December 2016

Cambridge, UK

CSR plc (LSE: CSR.L), (“CSR”) a wireless solutions provider and leading supplier of Bluetooth technology, today announces the acquisition of Clarity Technologies, Inc. (“Clarity”) for a consideration of $17.1 million payable in cash.

Clarity is a leading provider of software and services for improving the audio quality and performance of voice-based communications systems and products. Its voice extraction and echo cancellation software is based on its proprietary Clear Voice Capture technology (“CVC®”), which enhances the audio performance of any voice-based product or system, including wireless headsets, wireless handsets and automotive hands free systems.

CSR is the leading Bluetooth provider having a unit market share of 51% of Bluetooth devices shipped in Q4 2004 and having won 69% of all Bluetooth end products and modules qualified by customers in 2004, nine times that of CSR’s nearest competitor. In 2004, CSR was also the leading Bluetooth silicon supplier in the top three sectors of the Bluetooth industry with 55% of the design wins in Mobile Phones, 85% of the design wins in Wireless Headsets and 83% of the Bluetooth design wins in PCs. CSR is the only company with customers who have qualified products to the new Bluetooth V2.0 + EDR (Enhanced Data Rate) specification and with its fourth generation BC4 device is the only company shipping production quantities to this specification.

As the market migrates to higher audio quality for both mono (telephony) Bluetooth headsets and in-car handsfree systems today and stereo (music playing) Bluetooth headsets and HiFi connections tomorrow, Bluetooth audio connections will become, by far, the most important application for all of these segments.

Two years ago, CSR completed the development of the world’s first Bluetooth ICs with integrated DSP co-processors and Audio Codecs to enable higher quality audio and these are now in volume production. The combination of CSR, the world’s leading Bluetooth technology provider, with Clarity, the world’s leading provider of echo and noise cancellation software, will allow CSR to increase further the superiority of its audio solutions at a time of continuing consolidation in the industry with fewer Bluetooth hardware providers.

Commenting on the acquisition, John Hodgson, CEO of CSR said: “This is an exciting acquisition for us. Not only does Clarity give us access to leading customers in the US automotive sector but its patented software will give us a key competitive advantage in audio, which we believe will continue to be the largest Bluetooth application into the future. Bluetooth products, such as next generation wireless telephony stereo headphones for PCs and MP3 players, will demand better quality noise reduction and echo cancellation and in our view CVC is the best software in the market to provide this.”

About CSR

CSR plc (Cambridge Silicon Radio) is a leading provider of single-chip radio devices for short-range wireless communication. CSR offers developed hardware/software solutions for Bluetooth based around BlueCore, a fully integrated 2.4 GHz radio, baseband and micro-controller. BlueCore features in over 60 per cent of all qualified Bluetooth enabled products and modules listed on the Bluetooth website with industry leaders including Nokia, Dell, Panasonic, Sharp, Motorola, IBM, Apple, NEC, Toshiba, RIM and Sony using BlueCore devices in their range of Bluetooth products. CSR is now producing its fourth generation BlueCore devices to support the recently released Enhanced Data Rate standard. In November 2004 CSR announced the first single chip IEEE802.11a, b, g embedded solution specifically targeting the mobile phone and consumer electronics markets. CSR has its headquarters in Cambridge, UK, and offices in Richardson, Texas, USA; Tokyo, Japan; Seoul, Korea; Taipei, Taiwan; Aalborg, Denmark; and Lund, Sweden.

More information can be found at www.csr.com and the partner web site www.btdesigner.com.
More information about Bluetooth technology can be found on the SIG web site at www.bluetooth.com
Alan Woolhouse CSR VP of Communications

Birmingham, MI. (September 21. 2000)

Sloan Ventures has drawn plaudits for its success in helping Michigan develop into a national leader in the technology-driven economy. A leading developer and funding source for high technology businesses, Sloan has been singled out by the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) for its venture capital efforts. The Michigan Legislature also cited the firm for its success in helping Michigan grow and diversify its economy.

Founded in 1995 by brothers Jeffrey and Richard Sloan of Birmingham, the firm has launched ten companies and funded them with $30 million in private equity financing.

The MEDC made the award September 19, 2000 at its annual Michigan Investment and Commercialization Success Celebration in Lansing. Richard Snyder, chair of the MEDC executive committee, and Doug Rothwell, MEDC president and CEO, distributed awards in four areas of commercialization success: venture capital, advanced manufacturing, life sciences and information technology, manufacturing, life sciences and information technology. “The winners exemplify the successful transfer of technology to commercialization,” Snyder said. “Commercialization success in these important industries is key to helping the state develop into a national leader in the technology-driven economy.”
Jeffrey Sloan. Sloan Ventures CEO, said the firm is in the business of creating businesses – connecting the ideas, money and people needed to create high growth companies. “We’ve positioned Sloan Ventures as a hub of new business development, bringing together innovators and entrepreneurs; angel and venture capital investors; strategic business partners; executive personnel; and essential businesses services,” Sloan said.

A hybrid between a business incubator and a venture capital firm, Sloan Ventures is an anomaly in the Midwest. More common in Silicon Valley and along Route 128 near Boston, such firms focus on the essential ingredients of the very early stages of business creation – identifying high growth potential ideas, sourcing first-round funding, recruiting key executives to lead them, and making the businesses and their products marketable.
“Our company helps to fill the gap between the stage of ideation or innovation of a business concept and the stage when traditional venture capitalists would consider the project to be far enough along for venture funding,” Sloan said. “Unlike traditional venture capitalists. we engage in projects that are typically at the pre-business plan stage and join the innovator or entrepreneur as founders of the company,” he added.

“The art of building a new business is a challenging one. and one that requires a solid team to get it off the ground,” said Richard Sloan. co­-managing director of Sloan Ventures. “It is essential to complement the innovator’s passion with a partner who has the resources and infrastructure to give the business credibility. strategy and staying power and that is precisely the role that Sloan Ventures plays on behalf of entrepreneurs and innovators. “By way of example. Sloan Ventures has helped give birth to the following portfolio companies:

• Clarity. LLC, a builder or enabling technology for voice interface products that require clear transmission. even in the noisiest environments.
• YetGen, LLC, a pioneer molecular genetics company specializing in genetic disease research and disease detection services.
• GeneWorks, LLC, an advanced transgenics company that utilizes egg-laying hens to manufactures desirable proteins and enzymes for pharmaceutical, industrial, laboratory research and other major market applications.
• Gradient Technologies, LLC, a high tech company which is commercializing a new generation of proprietary antennas.
• StartupNation. LLC, a global media network that provides resources needed by early stage businesses with its regional affiliate division in Detroit, MJ known as Digital Detroit, LLC.
• Rubicon Genomics, Inc, a genomics tools company that enables significantly accelerated and more informative DNA sequencing for genomic research and diagnostics applications in the biotech, pharmaceutical. and agricultural industries.
• ServiceReps, lnc, an Internet-based 24/7 customer service company that provides live customer service and sales support online at client e-commerce websites.

Sloan Ventures, LLC. -The Business of Creating Business (sm)

Press release contact info:
David Bassett
Glenn Oswald
(248)855-6777

Sloan Brothers shoot television show focused on entrepreneurship for national public television. The show will air across the country starting in May of 2010. The following blog was posted by someone who attended the taping as part of the live studio audience..

Very exciting news! StartupNation will be on the COVER of DPTV’s Signal magazine in March and highlighted inside with editorial content and additional ads promoting the program debut March 16th – to over 65,000 households!

The first big stumbling block to starting your own business: What, exactly, will you do?

“It’s not always clear to people what kind of business they would start themselves,” said Rich Sloan, a Flint native who with his brother Jeff launched a radio show, wrote a book and created a Web site called StartupNation. On their book cover, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm dubs them “the rock stars of entrepreneurship.”

Their deal is designing your dream business. This year, they also created a special for the Public Broadcasting Service called “StartupNation: Open for Business with the Sloan Brothers” that was taped in February with a live audience at the Detroit Public Television studios in Wixom and aired twice this month on WTVS (Channel 56).

If he were a betting man, Jeff Sloan would put some money down on Metro Detroit’s recovery.

And that means recovery in the areas that matter: stronger automotive manufacturers, up-and-coming industries like film, batteries and energy as well as a real entrepreneurial spirit. That sense of entitlement (you know, that fat, life-long, high-paying job on the assembly line) that has held this region back is lessening, Sloan notes, and not a second too soon.

Now, I don’t let just anyone talk about Detroit like that. This area is like my little brother, and you only get to make fun of family if you’re family. But Sloan has got the entrepreneurial chops and business background to make these assertions. And then some.

Check out what Sloan, a Flint native and co-founder of StartupNation, has to say about the business climate, and how we are poised to take advantage of it. (P.S. Did I mention that Entrepreneur magazine just named Detroit one of its best in terms of being ‘off the grid’ or a good place to forge your own way? Take a note, people.)

Some background: Jeff and his brother, Rich, created StartupNation together in 2002. The duo are longtime entrepreneurs, having started and grown many businesses. These include the world’s leading Arabian horse breeding operation, a consumer products import company and an early-stage venture development and financing firm (Sloan Ventures) that has infused more than $60 million into financing fast-growing technology companies.

StartupNation is a resource for starting a company with broadcast, online, print and event channels providing access to experts in their respective fields. Their website has 250,000 monthly users and more than 175,000 pages of business advice, networking opportunities, professional group forums and podcasts. They also wrote a book and companion DVD StartupNation: Open for Business (by the way, the DVD drops today…how’s that for timing?).

Sloan describes himself as a “Alex P. Keaton” type (remember the punk kid carrying a brief case on the 1980s television show “Family Ties”? My sister is still swooning.) He always worked for himself since he was a teenager. Even at 17, he had the sense of self to borrow a few bucks from his parents, pool it with a buddy and buy a house to renovate. They sold it for far more than the $7,000 it took to buy it (remember, this is Flint in the 1980s…not too far off from the Detroit of today, but I digress.) That sale truly fueled his fire for more, Sloan said.

Most recently, Sloan has launched a Southeast Michigan business accelerator or incubator called NextWave. Based in the Detroit suburb of Troy, it will house some 35 businesses in their start-up phase. The for-profit enterprise will soon expand internationally, Sloan said. They also are looking at other U.S. markets, including Cleveland and Pittsburgh.

On with the show…

Q: Do you see potential here?
A: It’s really unbelievable, the potential. I’m a cheerleader and an ambassador for Southeast Michigan. Through NextWave, I’m being pitched at least a business idea a day, sometimes four or five. I think what’s been missing here is a culture and an infrastructure to focus on our entrepreneur community. We’ve been so centered on our corporate companies because of the automotive industry. And that’s obviously great; we need them here. But they also recognize that we need small businesses and new ideas. … I’m so blown away by what I’m hearing and the ideas that people are approaching me with. They’re pretty sophisticated. I’m very impressed with the sophistication of the entrepreneurs here. They’re approaching us with everything from consumer ideas to automotive related to biotech to healthcare. The ideas certainly are sophisticated, but one thing I wouldn’t have expected is that the entrepreneurs have a pretty good grasp of how to create a business plan and how companies are created and grown in a traditional venture capital model. So there’s a lot of raw material. What’s missing is the connective tissue. You need the culture that brings everything together. It’s that catalytic converter that links things together and makes them viable. We need to bring it all together.

Q: What is motivating Metro Detroit entrepreneurs?
A: We’ve had a corporate perspective. Because of the unions and the big corporations, there is a certain sense of entitlement. In the past, you just go out and get a job and you’ve got a sense of security for the rest of your life. Well, hello. Corporations are no longer offering a sense of a security like before. You’re better off being your own boss. … What you need is an incredible driver. People don’t just want to start businesses today to make more money or all those glorious reasons we have when the economy is good. Now it’s not about moving up from a Volkswagen to a Mercedes. Now it’s about existence. Jobs have dried up, unemployment benefits are running out. If you can’t get a job, you’re not left with a lot of choice if you have mouths to feed. Starting a business has fallen into the realm of necessity not a want. That’s a much stronger driver than I want to buy a much fancier car or I want to buy a boat. Those things fall into the category of desire. Feeding your kids is a need. People’s desire to start a business has amped up so much. We’ve seen traffic (at our Web site) up significantly. And the demand at NextWave – we’ve only been open 30 days – has far exceeded what we expected at this level. We could be looking at 10 new companies a day.

Q: Where do you see potential where others may not?
A: I do believe that the auto companies now that they’re right sized have the potential to be successful businesses. Now we could have companies based in Southeast Michigan that are really extraordinary companies. We don’t have to turn our heads (in shame) because of another quarter of losses. I don’t believe those will be the stories of the future. I think they’re going to more innovative, nimble and entrepreneurial, and, therefore, much more exciting from the product to the way they’re going to be run. Plus, Michigan is becoming a capital of movie making. Who would ever think we could be the next Hollywood? And it’s happening. Those two things in additional to the entrepreneurial environment that I mentioned earlier are exciting. There have been new approaches to energy and battery manufacturing. There’s a real chance that Michigan could emerge as a major player in entrepreneurial and new economy objectives.

Q: So what happens next?
A: One thing we’re working on is bringing back Digital Detroit. It was an annual conference I helped to start and operate from 2000 to 2004. We’re bringing it back in May 2011. We need something to bring the pieces back together and help seed business activity here. People are asking me to bring it back, and I’m back here now (after living in Phoenix). … I ended up coming back here quite frankly because this is home. There really is something to be said for Midwestern values. I knew I wanted to raise a family in an environment like this with these people around them. The level of quality of people here is high. This is where I came from, this is what I know and this is what I appreciate. In the end, it’s all about the people. Even when we evaluate a new business opportunity, it’s all about the jockey, not the horse. When you start with a good quality base of people here, anything’s possible. That counts. Somehow it tends to get lost in business, but let me tell you that counts a lot. If you lack character or quality as a person, it comes out in business, especially in a small business environment. If you lack those qualities, you will somehow compromise your business one way or another.

Read more: http://detroit.blogs.time.com/2010/08/10/qa-jeff-sloan-on-detroits-entrepreneurial-environment/

Great Lakes Angels, Inc.